This invention relates to electric lamps and, more particularly, to an improved base for such lamps.
The features of the present invention are particularly useful as applied to the construction of the incandescent lamps employed in automobiles, such as the dual-filament lamps employed in tail light assemblies. Prior lamps of this type generally employed a type S-8 glass bulb cemented in a brass double contact bayonet base. Although used for a number of years, such bases pose a number of disadvantages. For example, anyone who has replaced such a lamp in their automobile will appreciate the great difficulty experienced in position-referencing the base to insure the proper lamp-to-socket orientation. The base is cylindrical and the only orientation reference means are small indexing pins at the sides of the base. This referencing problem also holds true for automatic insertion of the lamp into the socket during production assembly. Further, the lamp to base construction for the dual filament lamp requires three soldering points for electrical connections (the two lead-in wires serving as the common connection are twisted and soldered to the sidewall of the base, while the other two wires are respectively soldered to the twin contact nodes at the bottom of the base). This leads to corrosion or other contact degradation problems caused by soldering fluxes. Finally, the bayonet base lamp requires a somewhat complicated and relatively expensive socket design.